TinyMoves: About us
Our work starts with what the research actually says.
Every initiative TinyMoves builds starts in the same place: the peer-reviewed evidence on what actually works for children and families. Not awareness campaigns. Not information alone. The interventions that change behavior, build skills, and produce outcomes that last.
The through-line is a conviction the field has validated for decades — informed, confident parents and caregivers are the most powerful force in a child's life. Our job is to give them, and the programs that serve them, the tools to act on that power.
What we do
TinyMoves turns research into small, practical changes — for parents, programs, and communities — that add up to big differences for children.
How we work
Build national partnerships that take evidence-informed content to scale through trusted relationships with the programs already working with children and families
Who we center
The families with the most at stake and the least support, in every initiative we design
Our Team
Nilofer Ahsan, Founder & Executive Director
For more than 30 years, Nilofer Ahsan has worked at the intersection of research and practice in child welfare and family well-being. A geek at heart, her work has centered on building knowledge with and for parents and communities, and translating what we know into practical change on the ground.
That conviction informed her work on the original protective factors framework that became the foundation of Strengthening Families — a child abuse and neglect prevention approach now implemented in 42 states and five countries. It led her to spend more than a decade coordinating the national network of states and partner organizations that carried the framework into communities across the country. It informed her work as founding co-director of the FRIENDS National Resource Center, supporting every U.S. state in building community-based child abuse prevention strategies — and, on behalf of the Children's Bureau (HHS), as the content lead for the CBLCC, connecting federal policy and the practitioners, researchers, and family support programs doing the work on the ground.
Her work on TinyMoves is about turning evidence into action — at scale, through trusted relationships, in ways families can actually use it.
She holds both a Bachelors degree and a Masters in Public Policy from the University of Chicago where she was accepted for simultaneous graduate and undergraduate study.
Lisa Penelton, Chief Data Strategist
A data native with 30 years of experience connecting the dots between human needs, organizational goals, and cultural context, Lisa Penelton has spent her career mapping the path from research and statistical methods to evidence-based action.
Her background moves across social science, public policy, marketing analysis, and data strategy — a range that reflects both intellectual range and a consistent through-line: helping organizations solve complex problems in creative, impactful ways. An insight-focused professional before and since the digital revolution, she brings a pragmatic approach that integrates AI-driven optimization with the slower, more durable work of relationship development and trust-building. The result is work that is both immediate and lasting.
Lisa's agency experience includes Critical Mass, Razorfish, Draft Worldwide, and other top digital and direct agencies with clients ranging from Nissan/Infiniti and Kaiser Permanente to United Airlines and SAP. She has also held senior leadership roles on the client side at CitiGroup, United Way Worldwide — where she served as a practice advisor to more than 3,000 local affiliates — and AT&T. Most recently, she has worked as an independent data strategist and fractional Chief Data Strategist, helping organizations build the data infrastructure, governance, and literacy to make evidence work for them in practice, not just on paper.
She holds a master's degree from the Irving B. Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago and a bachelor's degree from the University of Illinois.
Charlie Levin, User Experience
Charlie Levin has spent more than 30 years doing something deceptively difficult: making complex information feel intuitive, beautiful, and human. Working across digital and analog media, she has built a practice at the intersection of visual design, user experience, and education — translating what researchers and educators know into experiences that audiences can actually engage with and use.
Her portfolio spans an unusually wide range, from museum exhibitions and textbooks to interactive software, data visualizations, and online learning platforms. But the through-line is consistent: a commitment to meeting people where they are, and designing for the way they actually think and learn. At WestEd, the national nonprofit focused on education research and practice, she brought that philosophy to work with state and district-level agencies across the country — expanding design thinking and accessibility practices agency-wide, and helping teams understand that how information is presented is inseparable from whether it lands.
That conviction is visible throughout her early childhood work. Through her studio GirlCharlie Art and Design, Charlie has been the design force behind some of California's most important early learning resources — including the state's Infant-Toddler Learning and Development Frameworks, the Preschool and Transitional Kindergarten Learning and Development Frameworks, and the Count Play Explore math initiative. These aren't just policy documents; they are the tools that practitioners, caregivers, and educators across California reach for when they need to understand what young children need and how to support them. Making that research accessible — visually clear, culturally resonant, and genuinely usable — is exactly what Charlie does.
She holds a BFA from the University of Michigan, where she graduated summa cum laude with studies in Fine Art and Philosophy.